Welcome Guests, Gain New Friends

Halloween is celebrated this Saturday.  Children, often accompanied by their parents, will ring our doorbells and proclaim, “Trick or treat.”  We, in turn, will compliment them on their costumes and offer them their choice of candy.  (And we will hope that they don’t offer any tricks.)

Although Halloween is not a Jewish holiday it does offer us the opportunity to observe a mitzvah.  We can fulfill the commandment of hachnasat orchim, welcoming guests.  According to tradition, we are obligated to welcome people with warmth and dignity.  We are instructed to show concern to others.

We are to model ourselves after Abraham.  When he saw three travelers approach his tent he said, “My lords! If it please you, do not go on past your servant.  Let a little water be brought; bathe your feet and recline under the tree.  And let me fetch a morsel of bread that you may refresh yourselves; then go on—seeing that you have come your servant’s way.” (Genesis 18)

Abraham offered food and shelter to these travelers.  He offered them a respite from their journey.  He welcomed them into his tent.  He did not hope to gain anything by this.  He felt it was his obligation.  Judaism likewise sees welcoming guests as of the utmost importance.  When we offer others the warmth of welcome, we can fashion life-long friendships.

In an age when everything is scheduled, when getting together with others is coordinated and sometimes even strategized, hachnast orchim offers us the reminder that a simple welcome can transform relationships.  The Talmud relates that welcoming guests is greater than welcoming the divine presence.  (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 127a) We find God in the face of others.  We see the divine in the likeness of strangers.  We are offered the opportunity to make new friends and the chance to renew old relationships when we open the door to others.

Halloween offers us a reminder that sometimes a friendship can be sparked by something as simple as a knock on the door.